Eight Tries, For Nine Lives
by Black3Hunter
Summary: You're not really dying but each time, it sure feels like it. In this eight plus one equals a funeral for you and nine different deaths. Serious TW Including Thoughts of Suicide. Does have a rather happy ending.


Trigger Warnings: Abuse, Blood, Serious Thoughts of Suicide and Death.

However, it does have a decent ending.

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><p>The thought came to you during sophomore year. As your father's belt bit into your skin. Again and again.<p>

Nine lives. They say cats have nine lives. The myth being that cats can die and come back eight times and at the end of that ninth life will not return.

Nine lives figuratively in relation to actually dying. Nine times where their heart stops, but starts. You wonder if the same could hold true for humans. Not so much in dying, but in coming close to it.

Nine times where you metaphorically die. You think that the concept is strange; however, you latch onto it. You want to make it to eight times you think you are going to die before you actually do. The idea gives you a kind of hope that graduation just hasn't been able to stir. It gives you something to cling to, so that you can cling to life.

You've got eight more strikes on your back, and eight strikes for your life.

You're standing in the back of glee again. Just standing and watching.

Everything hurts in the same way trains are loud. Constant, consistent, and numbing.

They're all dancing now. Standing like this feels almost like time has left you. You wonder if time can keep you in movement, as it loses you in motion.

Time is ceaseless and when it joins back with you it is time to go.

No one is home. No one is ever home though.

_This is no home-_

-You think as you stare at the spot of blood that still remains in your room. It scares you to look at it. When your breath quickens you know you need to leave.

As you catch a glimpse of yourself in the hallway mirror while you are fleeing you think:

_Panic does not look good; panic is the fear in your eyes plus the terror in your gut; mixed with the knowledge in your head that you will never get away. And the blood will be there when you get back, it will still be there when you clean it, it will still be there when you die. There is no beauty here. This is no home._

You stand on the edge of a bridge overlooking a river, and your first life goes with the rushing tide.

It is gone. The blood remains.

2.

Sam asks you out in glee. He asks you out. All you can see is the rainbow flag that hides under his skin.

And the one that covers your back.

When you say no it sounds like a confession you can never make.

Kurt and Blaine make a cute couple. You hate them. Because you have no other choice. And when you see Finn ask Rachel out you make the decision to feel nothing, so instead you feel the river that washed you away in your first life.

You drive home. It's raining. You can't imagine this making a rainbow, but you know it will.

_After the rain will come a rainbow, but it is just in addition to the rain not the solution. _

You don't know what it will equal; however endless tears can't be solved with a forced smile, so you're sure it will be negative.

When you see a truck in the oncoming lane all you can think is:

_Two, two things added and now two things missing. Six more lives for me to live. One last one for me to die._

3.

You stumble into your bedroom. Your head is throbbing, as sure as your father's will be tomorrow. Your cheek is beginning to swell, and the colors that paint you scream of an agony that will always be more than skin deep. Like a form of cancer, these will never go; they will always keep you.

Your mirrored self stares back morosely. You would say somber, but you'd hate to take the color from your eyes, and it is the last vibrancy you have. You'd hate to lose it.

There's a container for some type of painkiller in your hand. It's definitely full. In your head you can hear them spill out into your hand like a million little sleeps, and two million shut eyes.

One pills passes your lips, but goes down your throat like the entire bottle.

It tastes like the first puzzle piece to freedom. And your third life goes away like an unknown picture. It's unsatisfying.

4.

Your mother pours another glass of wine. You don't know why you're standing in the doorway watching her drink. You also don't know why she stands in the doorway and watches while he hurts you. You suppose the answer lies in not knowing and not in an actual reason.

The alcohol chains her like your father's religion chains you. Unheeded and bitter. It's a system you think. He beats you to establish some type of dominance that he doesn't deserve, and she drinks to forget the things that she's promised. Like that time when you were little and she said she'd always protect you.

You go into the kitchen now. There's dust on the counter. For just a second you imagine what it would look like if it were a home. But all you can see is it empty and forgotten, so you imagined it burning. For just a minute you're warm.

Number four floats away in a paper bag of fire that is so beautiful in torment that you wish you could have gone with it.

But it is only four, and halfway is not an empty cup; neither a spent life apparently.

5.

Your father is home. You think of staying in your car. You think of carbon monoxide poisoning.

You can taste the cloying sweetness more than the belt on your back.

Five has never been a good number. It's always been red to you.

6.

The entire glee club has to take a bus to sectionals. There is just miles and miles of forest between you and your destination. The woods look warm in there little patch of natural perfection.

Rachel is beside you. She keeps dragging you into conversation. You aren't even annoyed because she's been talking about New York and she seems so alive. If the worth of life was only determined by one's dreams than you're sure she would make it priceless.

When Kurt starts up a new discussion on Broadway plays you are once again staring out the window.

You wonder what it would be like to wander into the forest and never come back. You wonder what being willfully lost would look like. You hope no one would look for you, because you just want to be lost to yourself not to everyone else.

Your sixth death is by far the most peaceful one, and is far more comfortable than any one you could wish for. You say goodbye to the trees like they were your own chosen family. Blood of the covenant, and comfort in unity. It would have been nice.

7.

You celebrate Rachel's birthday with the rest of the glee club, strangely enough, in the glee classroom. There's cake. Rachel's dads prove to be the exact opposite of either of your parents.

_They're kindness is like the breath of fresh air after your fifth death._

But it is tainted in envy. Your eyes are green, and in this you'd rather they be somber.

They all laugh like love. You wish it didn't look so foreign to you. You wish a lot of things watching them. You wish for death at the end when you are all cleaning up and the knife is so close to you.

You feel like screaming. Seven goes. Everything is too close. And the blood that would be on the floor would not go away. Would not wash away. Could not be forgotten.

8.

It's a party at Berry's. A party with alcohol and you want this last little bit of life to be as bright as possible.

You are not sober.

Everything is colors, and you worry death will be dull in comparison.

Rachel's dragging you to your feet. Things are shifting, and you can't remember being on the ground.

She's helping you to her car. Apparently she's sober. At least you hope she is because now she's driving.

Now she's talking. Words are mashed together:

_Home… Quinn… worried about you… trouble… home…_

You don't know the definition of home at the moment, but you know it's not anywhere you've ever been.

Somehow something clicks. You realize that she is taking you to your house-

_Not a home, not a home-_

- and all you can do it try to string together enough of a sentence that will convince her that the only place she is taking you to is hell.

The car's stopped. The car has stopped. She's coming around and opening your door. Struggling, struggling, but you're drunk and she's deceptively strong. Up the stairs to the porch. The lights on. You're scared. She's about to try the door when it swings open.

_Scared. Panic looks even worse on her. _

He's there, and you wish his eyes were somber, so that the rage that was fire would not burn you like it burned you're forth life.

_Eight lives that have gone so fast. Oh how I don't want this to be my last breath._

He's fast. You don't see his fists, or his feet. You see Rachel's face though. You see her tears as she frantically tries to do… something. You're not sure what, but there's a marching beat in your heart. It's on repeat, and it tastes like blood, and it sounds like:

_Don't cry. Don't cry. We're all made to die. Don't cry. Don't cry. We're all made to die. _

There's blood on the porch, blood on the door. It won't go away.

This time you will die.

9.

When you wake up, all you can see is a funeral for nine deaths that haven't happened.

Then all you see is tears on cheeks. There's three berries by your bed side, and the corner of your mouth curves up because they are looking at you more happily than you have ever looked at yourself. It looks like hope. You don't think of all the blood.

You think of life. And how eight times you had to save yourself, but that ninth time it was someone else that kept your heart beating. It did not stop. Beating and repeating:

_We all live. We all die. But darling I still have time._

**The floor was clean.**


End file.
